


The Hardened Heart

by palimpsestus



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:33:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No man alive has a harder heart than she. When she hears of the Jackdaw's fate, and that of it's Captain, she does not shed a tear or curse the heavens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hardened Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Alas, my ship. Sunk by history.

No man alive has a heart harder than hers, she thinks. When news comes of the _Jackdaw’s_ commandeering and her Captain’s marooning, Mary Read only raises a bottle to the memory of Kenway and drinks deep, the fire of the spice and horse-piss grog burning her insides so fierce that tears pricked in her eyes.

But her heart did not ache. Oh no. Her heart was strong. Let the others in Nassau curse and beat their breasts. She knew Kenway for what he was. A vain and glory-driven hound.

Who had soft lips knotted at one corner with a scar, that were hot and demanding on the hollow of her throat. Where he never noticed that an Adam’s Apple didn’t exist, he devoted his tongue and teeth.

She swallowed more grog. She checked the plant of her boots on the board and the spread of her knees. Boy. Lad. Try just that little bit too hard to be a man, and you are undoubtedly the boy.

Kenway. Kenway Kenway Kenway. You daft fool. You set your cap and you sail against the wind, you don’t care how many ropes you snap along the way.

_‘Your name’s not James, is it?’_

Man or woman, sometimes she was sure she was one more than the other, she liked it when a man was inside her and on top of her and embracing her. She liked it when it was Kenway. She liked to hear him strain to please her.  She liked his knotted lip on hers and stubbled cheek against hers. She liked when he set aside the stolen blades to hold her safely.

“To Kenway,” she announced to the tavern. “Let us hope he had a pistol with him, eh?”

“And one shot!” some wag took up the cry and the drink was passed around, the men were merry and no one thought overlong about one stranded captain and some sold slaves. In Nassau they had their own miserable lives to drown.

Adé. Now there’s a man that men ought to be mourning. Loyal, brave, fearsome on the deck. Aye, but they were barely remembering his name. She might be a better man for grieving for Adé. Adé, she might find. Adé, she might help.

Thrice curse Rackham for his role in all this. She’d unman him.

‘It’s Mary is it? I had an aunt named Mary.’

She’d tied her hair back once more and had her coat buttoned over her chest. It was dark that night, with only stars glinting down behind grey clouds. Kingston stank on the wind, brought to them by an uncooperative breeze as they shared a bottle of rum on the beach. The sand was damp against her britches. A bruise was forming on her cheek, where a guard’s rifle butt had kissed her.

‘And what of that?’ she responded.

Edward had laughed and lay back, folding his hands behind his head. They had lit no fire, lying low while the Kingston lobsters prowled for them. In the morning they’d sneak off, to finish their business. She had been foolish to return so soon after Prins’ death, and it had been only luck he had been there too. He was all too easy for a man who had just killed. It irked her, nipping at her conscience in the way her pride stung for being spotted. Not only that but her chest ached under its binding. Her feet had fled today, over rooftops and branches, and while her ribs burned with the flight, her heart had soared.

Until Kenway had appeared to save the day. That hurt too. Any man’s pride would have been pricked. With so much of her rubbed raw, she took one look at the man laid out beside her and sighed. When she began to shrug off her coat and unbutton her shirt, Kenway had sat bolt upright, his hands raised to deny what the glitter in his eyes wanted.

‘Calm yourself, Kenway,’ she teased, reaching under the hem of her shirt to unwind her bindings. She sucked in a shallow breath as she freed her chest, each breath next drawing deeper and deeper. And Kenway’s gaze more and more fascinated.

‘Why do it all?’ he asked as she cast the binding aside and rearranged her shirt. ‘It’s dangerous. What if a man might find out?’

‘I told you, didn’t I?’

‘Aye, but I’m a gentleman.’ He grinned at her scowl and reached to play with the end of the binding that lay between them. He liked to do something with his hands while he thought. ‘But why, Mary? Does the thought of a husband appal you so much?’

‘Had a husband once,’ she admitted. Freed of her binding, she lay down on the sand, on her side, propping her head up with one hand to watch her erstwhile apprentice. The others in the order had made it quite clear she was responsible for this one, whether he knew it or not.

‘A man should stand by his wife,’ Kenway murmured.

‘Aye, he should.’

He tossed the binding aside and lay down once more, mimicking her pose. Now he began to draw in the sand between them, the intricacies of the design hidden in the shadows. She could barely see his face when the clouds passed overhead. They lay in silence together, thinking of their husbands and wives, and the men they’d killed today, and would kill tomorrow, and what their husbands and wives might think of this.

‘Your disguise has a flaw,’ Kenway announced. ‘You need to bed a few whores else folks will be wondering.’

‘Folks already wonder,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m a boy, not a man.’

‘You’re a boy because you’ve no hair on your face, but even a boy will spend some gold on a lass now and then, no matter how piss poor a pirate he be.’

‘I am not a piss poor pirate!’

Kenway was laughing, harder when she tossed a handful of sand at his chest. ‘Damn it, Mary, inside my shirt!’

‘Perhaps you ought take it off.’ She couldn’t see him but she knew the expression on his face. His eyes would be calculating the next lines, his lips ready to tease or forgive as need be. Lads, men, boys and lassies, the talk of lovers was the same the world o’er.

‘Perhaps I shall,’ Edward agreed, and she helped him by tossing yet more sand. It seemed to echo against his skin, against ink she knew was patterned there and scars her actions had helped him to gather. His shirt joined her bindings and all of a sudden her skin was prickled and cold, her heart skipping and fluttering. The silence that stretched between them grew taut with his victory, his having taken the dare further than she.

Yield? What man would yield now?

She rolled upon her back and kicked off her boots, letting them fly to kick up sand but a yard or so toward the surf. Not so far she might not quickly retrieve them should it become time to run. ‘I never go unshod. Men are surprisingly observant about these things.’ She dug her toes into the damp sand and squirmed just a little.

‘Were it better light that I might judge for myself’. While she chuckled, he removed his boots too, placing them neatly to his side. Quick to advance the game then. Fast and headstrong, that was the measure of Kenway. At this rate she was on a course for a quick and unsatisfying night.

‘When did you suspect?’

‘Ah. In truth?’

‘In truth.’

‘When you took your hair from that queue and let your voice come natural.’

She laughed outright, loud and long, curling up on her side it hurt so much. Kenway seemed to enjoy her mirth, even when it was directed at him, and it was a rare thing in a man to allow himself to be laughed at by a woman. ‘You’re a fool, Kenway,’ she said when she could breathe again. ‘But you lie pretty.’

He leaned over to close the gap between them, a kiss and a hand on her hip, both she allowed and encouraged. This time and the next time and the times that came after, she found him to be surprisingly attentive for a man so focussed on his own glory. The sand scraped her shoulders as he thrusted, she tasted the salt on his cheeks while she gasped, and he spilled seed on the beach beside them while she ran her fingers in thankful, comforting motions on the small of his back. They lay on their backs to watch the dawn, half an ear and an eye looking for lobsters, the other senses attendant upon one another.

She didn’t see him for a month after, when she visited Greater Inagua on a whim and found him discussing his manor with a smith of all things. And while she tried to teach the Creed to him, he plied her with drink and smiles until she slipped away to his bed and waited beneath the covers, free of bindings and boots until, to his delight, he found her there.

Kenway wanted nothing from her, only to enjoy her and be enjoyed in turn. An arrangement that suited them both. He might hear her lecture on Assassins with thin tolerance, but he would never betray her. He might chase fortune at odds with her Order, but he at least helped them when their wants aligned.

But in Nassau, with the _Jackdaw_ taken and her Captain marooned, Mary’s heart was hard. She drinks again. She toasts Kenway again. No man alive.

And in the morrow, when the men are still nursing their aching heads, she makes headway for the slavers, for Adé, and to look for sails on the horizon.

 


End file.
